Five Old Tweets That Came Back to Haunt Chuck Schumer

In the age of social media, it is getting harder for politicians to hide their past comments and stances on issues. Twitter is especially good at keeping records on politicians, which is bad news for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.).

Since joining Twitter in November 2008, Schumer has tweeted over 10,000 times. Most of the tweets are about Schumer's views on a wide range of issues. But several of those tweets have come back to haunt the New York Democrat.

Chuck Schumer ✔ @SenSchumer The American people expect the Senate to do its job. They are tired of obstruction and my-way-or-the-highway politics. #DoYourJob 11:09 AM - 23 Feb 2016

What he meant: Before his party lost the White House, Schumer criticized his Republican colleagues for not holding a hearing for former President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. Senate Democrats led a social media campaign using the hashtag #DoYourJob to pressure the GOP to hold a vote for Garland. It was ineffective, and Garland never got a hearing.

Why it didn't age well: The tables have turned. Schumer has led his caucus to filibuster President Donald Trump's Supreme Court pick Neil Gorsuch. After arguing for months that Supreme Court nominees deserved an up and down vote, the Democrats wanted to obstruct Gorsuch from having an up and down vote. It digs even deeper: Schumer voted for Gorsuch to be confirmed as a judge to a federal circuit court in 2006.

Chuck Schumer ✔ @SenSchumer Judge Gorsuch was unable to earn 60 votes. Now the GOP is about to change Senate rules to allow all SCOTUS noms to pass by majority vote. 12:18 PM - 6 Apr 2017

What he meant: Schumer believes that judicial nominees to the Supreme Court required a 60-vote threshold. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) used the "nuclear option," which removed the ability for senators to filibuster and requires a simple majority to move forward with Supreme Court nominees.

Why it didn't age well: Back in 2013, Schumer voted to use the nuclear option for other executive and judicial nominees. He was fine with removing the filibuster when Democrats were in power, but now wants to maintain the filibuster while he is in the minority party.

Chuck Schumer ✔ @SenSchumer My message to you: Keep organizing, keep calling & keep marching. Your actions are making a difference every day. #EndtheAssaultonFamilies 11:35 AM - 28 Mar 2017 912 912 Retweets 2,496 2,496 likes What he meant: The tweet meant to encourage people protesting Trump's agenda. Schumer applauded their actions and said they are making a difference.

Why it didn't age well: Schumer had a different opinion of people who protested the government back in 2011. When the Tea Party wave was sweeping the nation, Schumer called the movement "extreme" and said the Tea Party was standing in the way of Congress.

Here are 10 other times Democrats vowed to block Republican court nominees.

1. Sen Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in 2007 that President George W. Bush shouldn’t get to pick any more Supreme Court justices because Schumer was afraid the bench leaned too far Right. Schumer made this remark a whole 19 months before the next president was inaugurated.

2. His remarks in 2007 weren’t the only time Schumer vowed to stop a Republican nominee. In 2004, he said he would do everything in his power to stop Bush from elevating Charles Pickering to a federal appeals court in 2004.

3. “I’m prepared to do everything I can to stop the nomination of Justice Pickering,” Schumer said. “We can do a lot better.”

4. In 2004, his office released a statement saying Senate Democrats planned to “hold nominations until the White House commits to stop abusing the advise and consent process.”

5. -Senator Barack Obama said in 2006 that he supported the Democratic-led filibuster to stop Justice Samuel Alito from making it to the Supreme Court. Obama wasn’t the only Democratic senator to oppose Alito’s nomination. The late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) led an opposition coalition, which attempted to filibuster to block the confirmation process. Kennedy was joined by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), and Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who publicly stated they opposed Alito’s confirmation.

6. In 1960, the Democratic-controlled Senate passed a resolution to block President Eisenhower from being able to make any more recess appointments to the Supreme Court. The resolution stated: Expressing the sense of the Senate that the president should not make recess appointments to the Supreme Court, except to prevent or end a breakdown in the administration of the Court’s business.

7. Kennedy led a gang of eight senators in 2003 to block Bush nominee Miguel Estrada from rising to the Court of Appeals.

8. The AFL-CIO union vowed to block then-President Ronald Reagan’s nominee Robert Bork by soiling his public reputation so badly that any Democratic senator who voted in favor of confirming him would have to explain it to his constituents. Kennedy continued this line of rhetoric in a well-known floor speech. He infamously said: Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government.

9. Biden wrote the playbook for how to “bork” a Supreme Court nominee, a descriptive verb that now means to publicly pillory a nominee’s reputation to make it politically difficult for senators to vote for them. It’s named, of course, after what Democrats did to Robert Bork.

10. In 2008, Democrats banded together to filibuster Bush’s decision to nominate Priscilla Owen to a federal circuit court. Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, urged Senate Democrats to “stand up and fight as they have been doing with Miguel Estrada.”

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.